Media Templates Research Articles

Parking Humanity at the Door? Journalists and Editors Perspectives on Covering Murder-Suicide in Ireland

ABSTRACT This study examines how the production of news making is evidenced in published content about the complex social phenomenon of murder-suicide. Building on Reese and Shoemaker’s hierarchical model (2016), this study aims to understand the impact of the individual, routines, ideological, organisational and social institution levels on news content surrounding a case of murder-suicide in the Republic of Ireland. Data was gathered from in-depth interviews with journalists and news editors who detailed the nexus of competing interests that influence their work processes. Findings reveal how organisational structures, coupled with ideological orientations, industrial routines and the professional ideology of objectivity, acted as crucial gatekeepers, encouraging a dependency on elite sources. A crime narrative supported through the operationalisation of a media template perpetuated a hierarchy of victims. These representations served to mirror the institutionalised patriarchal power.

Pandemic has Recaste Media Template

In August 2021, nearly 200 million people globally were believed to have had Covid-19 since the first case was reported in China in late 2019. The reported global death toll topped 4.26 million even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) expressed grave concern over the coronavirus, its mutations and the ever growing list of symptoms. The Covid-19 pandemic has rightly been regarded as the worst disaster befalling the global social and economic landscape in the last almost 100 years. Whilst previous natural or manmade disasters viz. earthquakes, floods, epidemics and World War I/II were largely confined to a continent or two, the magnitude of coronavirus contagion is still unfolding for mankind. The pandemic, which quickly spread far and wide due to an interconnected world, faster travel modes and voluminous international trade, has impacted every facet of life and society, business being no exception. During these troubled times, the conventional mass media of newspapers, periodicals and news channels were at the forefront of informing the public about the outbreak and the aftermath of the pandemic, which is believed to have originated from a discreet lab in Wuhan, China. The media has been tirelessly disseminating news about Covid-19, lockdown, restrictions on trade and movement, the development of vaccines, probe into its genesis, collaboration between nations, vaccination process et al. The media has dextrously been highlighting the radical shift in the pre-Covid norms of society as also business, trade and industry. The crystallisation of new normal taking shape in these domains has lucidly been narrated and presented by the mass media for the general public.Ironically, while the media resiliently dispensed a yeoman’s service to the community by informing and educating on the crisis, it also underwent an irreversible metamorphosis itself! Beyond the noble purpose of serving as a vital pillar of democracy, a news organisation is intrinsically a business or a non-profit entity, as the case may be according to its constitution, for sustenance and growth. It also follows the standard principles that power the biggest of the global corporations to the more modest trading or industrial units locally. With the entire value and supply chains of the industrial and commercial world getting disrupted, thus bringing about a sudden shift in the conventional processes and the work hierarchies, the media could no longer afford the luxury of a status quo.

Sisterhood in 5D

Sisterhood in 5D

Alternative media framing of COVID-19 risks

Early media coverage of COVID-19, between 1 January and 31 March 2020, provided Alternative Media Personalities (AMPs) an opportunity to provide conspiratorial misinformation to their online audiences. Far-right AMPs may reframe sociopolitical aspects of risk to produce ‘fake-news’, amplifying future risks arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) to define factors of risk amplification, this study conducted a framing analysis upon 1,895 minutes of streamed video content from a popular, far-right, AMP regarding COVID-19. Significant differences in frame expression suggested that AMPs hold greater value in specific frames when providing infotainment based upon authentic interpretations of risk. A lack of significant change in frame expression over time suggests that AMPs may rely upon media templates when communicating risk to their audience. Qualitative data suggest that different aspects of risk amplification work in concert to provide discursive contexts for far-right AMPs to define risks from their ideological standpoint. The data provided by this study better outline some of the complexities facing scientific communications strategies which seek to directly address misinformation online.

دور مواقع الإذاعات الأجنبیة الموجهة فی تشکیل صورة مصر واتجاهات الشباب نحوها (دراسة تطبیقیة)

هدفت الدراسة إلى التعرف على معالجة القضايا المصرية في مواقع الإذاعات الأجنبية الموجهة مما يسهم في تشکيل صورة عن مصر، مستخدمة منهج المسح بشقيه الميداني والتحليلي، واعتمدت على المدخل الأيديولوجي لتحليل الخطاب واستمارة تحليل الخطاب والاستبانة، وتمثل مجتمع البحث في الجزء التحليلي بمواقع الإذاعات الموجهة، وتمثلت عينة الدراسة في کل من مواقع إذاعات (BBC) وإذاعة (سبوتنک) وموقع إذاعة الصين الدولية، وفي الجزء الميداني تمثل مجتمع البحث في الشباب المصري وعينة عشوائية بواقع (400) مفردة منهم. توصلت الدراسة إلى عدد من النتائج أهمها: - تصدر الحوار الأشکال التحريرية المستخدمة في مواقع الإذاعات الأجنبية الموجهة عينة الدراسة، وتصدرت الأخبار المتعلقة بمصر في المواقع -عينة الدراسة- مقدمة الحلقات، وجاء المراسل في مقدمة مصادر الخبر المتعلق بصورة مصر في هذه المواقع، کما تصدر الخبر (الاقتصادي) نوعية الأخبار الخاصة بمصر، واستخدام اللغة العربية الفصحى. انخفاض معدل متابعة مواقع الإذاعات الأجنبية الموجهة بين أفراد العينة، وأبدى 54.8% من المبحوثين سبب عدم متابعتهم لمواقع الإذاعات الأجنبية الموجهة بأنها تنحاز لوجهة نظر الدول الأجنبية التابعة لها، وتصدرت (متابعة الحدث فور وقوعه) دوافع تفضيل متابعة مواقع الإذاعات الأجنبية الموجهة، واحتلت برامج (التوک شو) مقدمة القوالب الإعلامية التي يفضلها فئات العينة على مواقع الإذاعات الأجنبية الموجهة. The image of Egypt as reflected in the foreign broadcasting sites And youth attitudes towards (An applied Study) The study aimed to identify the treatment of Egyptian issues in foreign broadcasting sites, which contributes to forming an image of Egypt, using the survey method in both its field and analytical aspects, and relied on the ideological approach to speech analysis and the speech and questionnaire analysis form, and the research community was represented in the analytical part of the directed radio sites and the study sample was In each of the BBC radio sites, Sputnik Radio and China Radio International, and in the field segment, the research community in the Egyptian youth is represented by a random sample of 400 individual. The study reached a number of results, the most important of which are: The dialogue was topped by the editorial forms of work in foreign broadcasting sites directed to the study sample, and news related to Egypt to the study sample sites provided the episodes, and the reporter came to the forefront of news sources related to the image of Egypt in these sites, as well as the standard Arabic (economic) news. The decrease in the rate of follow-up of foreign broadcasting sites directed among members of the sample, and 54.8% of the respondents expressed the reason for not following the foreign broadcasting sites as biased to the point of view of the foreign countries affiliated with them, and the (follow-up of the event immediately after it occurred) was motivated by preferences for preferring to follow the foreign broadcasting sites, and occupied programs (Talk Show) is an introduction to media templates that sample groups prefer over foreign broadcasting sites

Child sexual exploitation: a comparative frame analysis of news-media coverage over time

ABSTRACT Following a number of high-profile cases in UK towns such as Rochdale, Oxford and Rotherham, there has been a surge of interest and commentary about the sexual exploitation of children and young people in media, political and academic forums. An extensive research base dating back to the 1980s shows that, despite this renewed interest, child sexual exploitation is not a new problem, nor is it one new to media outlets and audiences. Sexual exploitation was established as policy concern in England in 2000 after publication of the first government guidance titled “Safeguarding Children Involved in Prostitution” following campaigns by leading children’s charities in the UK. This article uses frame analysis to identify news-media discourses about sexual exploitation of children and young people in two time periods (1997–99 & 2014–15), using a dataset drawn from three national newspapers. The analysis shows how discourses about young women have changed: from the sexualisation of young women in period one to framing young women more explicitly as “vulnerable” and victimised in period two. It reveals a change in the media’s focus on perpetrators, from their relative invisibility in period one to a racialised “media template” in period two.

Karoronga, kele’a, talanoa, tapoetethakot and va: expanding millennial notions of a ‘Pacific way’ journalism education and media research culture

As critical issues such as climate change, exploited fisheries, declining human rights, and reconfiguration of political systems inherited at independence increasingly challenge the microstates of Asia-Pacific, approaches to news media and journalism education are also under strain. University-based journalism education was introduced to the South Pacific in Papua New Guinea at independence in 1975 and in Fiji at the regional University of the South Pacific in 1987, while Technical Vocational Educational and Training institutions have been a more recent addition in the region. Some scholars argue there is little difference between Pacific and Western approaches to journalism, or that some journalism schools are too focused on Western media education, while others assert there is a distinctive style of journalism in Oceania with cultural variations based on the country where it is practiced and parallels with some approaches in Asia such as “mindful journalism.” This paper examines a “Pacific way” journalism debate which echoes a regional political concept coined by the late Fiji president, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. The paper argues for a greater appreciation of the complexities of media cultures in Pacific nations and proposes a more nuanced, reflexive approach to journalism in the Pacific region. This is reflected in a “talanoa journalism” model that he advocates as a more culturally appropriate benchmark than monocultural media templates.

Defining health risk by media template: Hong Kong’s news discourse of the Swine Flu pandemic

In the risk society that has resulted from modernization, power rests with those who define risks. In the midst of uncertainties and controversies surrounding unpredictable risks, the news value of objectivity becomes a key justification for news organizations and journalists narrating speculation of social risks in news discourses. I shed light on the theorization of ‘media template’, and construct a three-step model to examine how highly unknown social risks are constructed as social facts in the process of news-making. News discourse first represents a simplified and distorted ‘lesson learnt’ from a past exemplary event of concerned social risk. Second, it marginalizes meanings other than those constructed by that exemplar. Last, the news discourse ‘repairs’ its narration when contradictory evidence emerges. I explicate the model by demonstrating how Hong Kong’s news discourse about the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009 drew upon the exemplar of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic in 2003. I also discuss the implications of media template to news construction of social risks with reference to the theoretical underpinnings of risk society.

<i>Celebrity Big Brother</i>, Human Rights and Popular Culture

The British reality show Celebrity Big Brother caused great controversy in January 2007 when remarks made by a few contestants, most notably the reality TV star Jade Goody, and targeted at a fellow Indian contestant, were widely read as racist. In this paper, I analyse the race incident against the backdrop of a progressively expansive legal framework offering recognition for human dignity, equality and cultural diversity, most importantly through the Human Rights Act 1998. The Act aims to promote a comprehensive human rights ‘culture’ in public life, but it would be hard to ignore the extremely negative coverage of the legislation in large sections of the British press. However, the strong public reaction to the Celebrity Big Brother race incident seems to suggest that while public opinion on existing human rights legislation is divided, the core principles on which the law is founded may enjoy much greater support. Thus, politicians and media commentators were quick to read the Celebrity Big Brother furore as an encouraging sign of how inclusive British society had become. I am inclined to take a more sceptical stance, especially in light of the way in which Jade Goody’s class background was relentlessly targeted in press criticism of her appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, while sympathy for her victim, the glamorous Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, appeared to have been motivated largely by the fact that she fitted the media template of the deserving victim.

Servo-integrated patterned media by hybrid directed self-assembly.

A hybrid directed self-assembly approach is developed to fabricate unprecedented servo-integrated bit-patterned media templates, by combining sphere-forming block copolymers with 5 teradot/in.(2) resolution capability, nanoimprint and optical lithography with overlay control. Nanoimprint generates prepatterns with different dimensions in the data field and servo field, respectively, and optical lithography controls the selective self-assembly process in either field. Two distinct directed self-assembly techniques, low-topography graphoepitaxy and high-topography graphoepitaxy, are elegantly integrated to create bit-patterned templates with flexible embedded servo information. Spinstand magnetic test at 1 teradot/in.(2) shows a low bit error rate of 10(-2.43), indicating fully functioning bit-patterned media and great potential of this approach for fabricating future ultra-high-density magnetic storage media.

Increasing HIV Prevalence among Female Sex Workers in Indonesia: How is it Presented in the Media and in Scholarly Journals?

Within different target audiences, the media and scholarly journals have significant roles in enhancing the awareness and influencing the development of HIV prevention-related policies. However, particularly in developing and poor countries, the media seem to affect policy development in contradictory ways. Thus, it is interesting to investigate how the increasing prevalence of HIV among female sex workers (FSWs) in Indonesia is represented in the media and to compare this representation with those in scholarly articles.Using three types of newspaper and peer-reviewed scholarly articles, this paper found that the media tend to frame the problem and its risk factors as merely a health problem produced by unsafe behaviours that are inappropriate to the local culture and belief. Efforts to challenge dominant values through the involvement of local media should encourage local journalists to be aware of the consequences of their chosen media template. Furthermore, given the fact that the majority of scholarly articles included in the analysis focused more on the biological and behavioural factors of HIV infection, more social research is needed. Keywords: media, HIV, and policy

‘Clearly Blown Away by the End of the Morning’s Drama’: Spectacle, Pacification and the 2010 World Cup, South Africa

The massive security assemblages surrounding major sporting events and political summits embody two layers of spectacle. On the one hand, security operations are central to the governance of entertainment and media imagery. Simultaneously these security measures are profoundly theatrical and calibrated for the maximum visual impact: the spectacle of security itself. Some critical thinkers have described this dual spectacle as indicative of a contemporary state-corporate obsession with image and perception management, an obsession which detracts from ‘valid’ security concerns. By contrast I argue that spectacle and theatricality are in fact highly functional components of the pacification projects of state and capital. With reference to Guy Debord’s conception of ‘spectacle’, this article highlights how mega-events reveal, in highly dramatised form, the logic of pacification. Using the 2010 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) soccer World Cup as a case study, the article demonstrates how police and military power are mobilised to secure accumulation, to enforce social control and to extend the power and arsenal of the state security apparatus. What is truly spectacular about mega-event security is not just the incorporation of media templates into the working of state forces. Rather, the rhetoric and concept of security itself becomes a form of spectacular power as it serves to both obscure and justify how mega-events are ultimately projects of class power.

Media roles in influencing the public understanding of educational assessment issues

This paper explores the media coverage of UK national examination results. Utilising the findings from a previous Economic and Social Research Council-funded investigation into the media coverage of the release of General Certificate of Secondary Education and Advanced-level General Certificate of Education results, the paper builds on the findings of that study to explore wider implications. The earlier study had revealed the use of some standard ‘media templates’, which led to a fairly predictable range of news stories whatever the pattern of results might be in any given year. This paper explores ways in which Awarding Organisations and others might be more proactive in trying to improve the way in which assessments and examinations are portrayed in the media. It also considers the wider implications of the role of the media in influencing the public understanding of assessment issues.

HIV Communication. Global Emergencies, Media Templates, and African Communities (A Personal Journey)

HIV Communication. Global Emergencies, Media Templates, and African Communities (A Personal Journey)

Motives of the Rich and Powerful in Doing Interviews with Social Scientists

A growing body of sociological research on elites is done at close quarters, using interviews and ethnography. This article draws on interviews with the ‘super rich’ in Australia to examine the motives of elites in granting access to their lives and stories. The respondents of this study were largely indifferent to social science. In agreeing to be interviewed and engaging with the interview process, they drew upon two familiar points of reference — the media and therapy — as cognitive models or ‘templates’ for making sense of the process. The media template was outward looking, directed towards public relations and legitimacy. The therapeutic template was inward looking, directed towards families, peers and small world concerns. In turn, respondents were apparently motivated by contradictory considerations: on the one hand, wanting to promote their concerns to a wider audience and, on the other, wanting to reflect upon their predicaments in confidence. Yet respondents understood that neither template encapsulated the interview situation, causing respondents to shift between templates and motives in the course of interviews. This ambiguity meant that interviews demanded continuous negotiation and recalibration. It also enriched interviews, highlighting a reconfiguration of public and private worlds among elite communities.

Continuous-Stage-Movement Blankingless Electron-Beam Lithography for Patterned Media Template Fabrication

A slider and spindle (r–θ) stage electron beam (e-beam) mastering system with continuous-stage-movement blankingless beam shift lithography (BLSL) and flyback e-beam lithography (CSFL) brings together the features of high resolution, high accuracy, and high throughput to meet the various requirements for fabricating master templates for discrete track media and bit patterned media (BPM) for the next generation of hard disk drives. With the CSFL capability, we achieve multiple-overlay bit writing with one, two, four, and eight overlays for a BPM bit array to markedly improve track-to-track phase alignment accuracy from 5.6 nm sigma in a single write to 1.04 nm sigma in an eight overlay write. CSFL, in conjunction with the high-frequency response of the e-beam deflector, achieves 25 MHz high-throughput BPM bit array write with track pitches and bit pitches of 120 nm in the entire write range from 20 to 140 mm in diameter. This write takes only 11.6 h under the conditions of a line velocity of 3,000 mm/s, a beam current of 150 nA, a maximum rotation speed of 2,865 rpm, and a constant line velocity (CLV) write mode.

Graphoepitaxial cylindrical block copolymer nanodomains evaluated as bit patterned media template

To utilize self-assembled block copolymer structures to fabricate the template of bit patterned media, two basic issues of block copolymer nanodomains need to be considered: (a) size uniformity and (b) position accuracy. The manipulation of domain position was achieved here by graphoepitaxy of cylindrical block copolymer domains in a topographic trench pattern. Trench surface may be neutralized to guarantee the perpendicular orientation of cylindrical domains on the trench bottom surface and domain alignment along the trench sidewall. The size distributions of cylindrical domains on both flat surface and topographically patterned surface have been analyzed and the correlation between the size distribution and the local-range order is addressed. The distributions of the domain size and domain position-related parameters, such as the dot spacing along the axis (parallel to the trench edge) and across the axis, have been investigated as a function of the number of domain rows in the trench. Qualitatively, line edge roughness or linewidth roughness of trenches attributes to the larger variation of spacing across the axis. Finally, a surface trench without neutralization pretreatment was found to enable the graphoepitaxy of block copolymer domains with an areal density >1 Tdot/in.2.

Televising war: from Vietnam to Iraq

1. Conflicts of memory in a media age New memory Media flashframes Gulf Wars and media history An ethics of viewing 2. From Vietnam to the Gulf - re-visions of war The journalistic context of vietnam Photographic memory - vietnam and the Gulf War The Gulf War Living memories versus media memories Media templates - vietnam to the Gulf War Media templates - Gulf War to the Iraq war 3. Reality TV Iraq War - new propoganda, visions of speed and proximity American visions Critical discourse Overexposure 4. Bodies Fallen in time - the resonance of battle Anonymous corpse - the Jarecke image Covering the body The seen unseen Remembering Al-Amiriya Showing or saving bodies - the ethics of intervention Fading images 5. The Real Saddam? Moster or misjudged Guest's news The old Saddam From Hitler to Inspector Clouseau Searching for Sadam 6. The collapse of memory Shared visions Eyewitnesses in the line of fire The collapse of memory

Re-Mediating the Spaces of Reality Television: America's Most Wanted and the Case of Vancouver's Missing Women

In this paper I speak to debates amongst geographers and media scholars about the communities that television constructs in both ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ spaces. My point of departure is Morley's work on global television audiences, which, in focusing on the fears of white suburban viewers and the social exclusions they enact, neglects the images and narratives of television itself. The focus is a new North American television genre that addresses fears of urban crime, the ‘reality cop show’. In examining the genre's codes and practices and the ‘reality’ it creates, I try to specify the representational work which this kind of television performs. Analysis turns to a 1999 episode of Fox TV's America's Most Wanted that featured the mysterious disappearances of thirty-one women, all of whom were/are identified with the sex trade in Vancouver, Canada. As a morality tale of sex crimes and sexual dangers in the city, targeted at white North American suburban viewers, central details of the case were missing, including the fact that most of the disappeared were/are native women. The imposition of a Jack-the-Ripper “media template” displaced local and highly politicized explanations related to prostitution laws, community policing practices, and dangerous urban spaces.

Media templates: patterns of association and the (re)construction of meaning over time

This article introduces the concept of `media templates' and explores how these templates operate in relation to existing theories around key events and news icons. Drawing on focus group discussions, content analysis and interviews with media personnel, I demonstrate how templates help to shape news narratives and guide thinking not only about the past, but also about the present and the future. The argument is illustrated by examining the position of the `Cleveland scandal' (and the subsequent `Orkney crisis') in discussions of child sexual abuse. The discussion explores how templates such as Cleveland are established and maintained by source strategies, social power relations and journalistic/audience reception processes. The article concludes by outlining the implications of templates for media production practice, media studies theory and audience reception research.